You are in the checkout line at a grocery store. You notice a couple other similarly-aged men in the line next to you. One of them makes a comment about your [insert regional sports team]'s apparel, and you smile demurely and say something in response. You think nothing of the encounter, until you are about a block and half away from the store on your bicycle and you hear a "Hey! Hey!" It is the man from the store, and he approaches you and politely asks for you number. You give it to him, and he suggests the two of you get coffee sometime. Lovely, right?
Well, it is quite lovely when you have a goal of 3 dates in 3 months.
And then he mentions that he graduated in the spring from the institution you now work at. As in, you are minimally FOUR years older than him. And you think, "Well, this is the first red flag..."
Yes, I confess that I did go out to coffee with this young buck. I'm sure you're thinking that this type of age gap is my right up my alley, so why am I complaining? And usually, you would be right. But I generally reserve my cougar-esque crushes to young men who I have some sort of rapport with, or who look like Zac Efron, not strangers I've met in Safeway.
But I digress, back to the gentleman this post is really about...let me just give you some highlights of our coffee conversation:
- He offered to take me for a ride on his motorcycle. I politely declined. If it was Hugh Jackman asking, yes. If it was a 22-year-old who resembled Hugh Jackman in any way asking, yes. But it wasn't, so no.
- With bright eyes and determination, he talked of his plans for world domination using some sort of battery that could hold a charge and power an entire city. Yes! This sounds like a highly legitimate plan!
- His current career plans take him to a city about an hour north, where he will be living a Spartan lifestyle with five of his closest friends. And they will be starting an online marketing business that will be so successful, he can retire in a year! A year!
- He mentioned that he will be having shoulder surgery in two months that will temporarily impair his mobility, but not to worry--"it's not for a while, so you won't have to feed me pizza or anything the next time we see each other." Good. I was worried.
- After retirement, he plans to build a boat (with his bare hands!) that has a piano on it (yes! a piano!), and he will sail around the Mediterranean for the rest of his life, playing music, writing poems and authoring novels! You know...living life! Meeting people!
Sure enough, he texted later that day and said that he enjoyed our time together and thanked me for not macing him (?). I painfully refrained from any text back, too afraid that I would somehow end up in a short-term relationship with someone I didn't want to be with.
All was quiet on the western front, and I was relieved he saw my silence as a nice way of opting out of future interactions. Until I got this gem of a text message a week later: "Hey, I apologize for my absence, my grandmother has been rather ill and so I've been up in Seattle all week spending time with her. You're a pretty cool lady, but I will be honest, I'll be very busy these upcoming weeks, and so I can't promise anything. Perhaps when I come back to [my city] on occasion i'll give you a call, and we can hang out. But I'm not going to promise anything else."
(Readers, please remember that this was a text message received after I made no attempt to contact him, nor did I even reciprocate a response of mutual enjoyment of our coffee and conversation.)
There were a multitude of responses I thought of sending (e.g. "Dude, whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night" or "Yeah, I'll be pretty busy for the next year, but maybe when you retire I'll give you a call and we can hang out"). But since I'm a mature woman who is unfazed by the delusional tendencies of recently graduated and seemingly insecure young men, I decided to give him the courtesy of my silence instead of sharp wit.
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